Page 37 of Generation One LLR (Lorien Legacies Reborn 1)

Isabela snapped awake. This cold metal slab beneath her, it wasn’t her bed. And she wasn’t alone.

She sat up sharply, her back cracking, a rush of wooziness pumping through her head. Ran crouched in front of her. The Japanese girl’s gaze was, as usual, completely inscrutable.

But Ran had seen her. Of that, Isabela could be certain.

“It is okay,” Ran said. “You’re safe.”

Isabela touched her cheeks. She ran her fingers over leathery furrows, the patchwork border of skin grafts, puckered scar tissue. She brushed her hand over her scalp, the spiky bristles where her beautiful mane of hair once grew. Her eyes widened, locked on Ran, and she stifled a scream.

Then, she shape-shifted. Isabela put on her old face, the one from before the accident. The burn scars melted away, her skin smoothed out, her hair grew in. Ran watched with her head tilted, saying nothing. Isabela wondered if the other girl was capable of registering surprise.

“You saw me,” Isabela said flatly.

“Yes.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

“The others, too,” Ran said, glancing over her shoulder at the van’s closed back door. “At first, we thought you had been injured . . .”

Isabela put her face in her hands. Months of keeping up appearances—literally and figuratively—wasted. They would talk and she would become an object of pity, undesirable, disgusting . . .

She peeked out through her fingers. Wait. There was something more happening here. They were in the back of the stolen Academy van, except it wasn’t at all in the condition Isabela remembered. A warm wind blew in through the missing windshield. There were blood splatters on the floor. She noticed that Ran’s shoulder was wrapped in a fresh bandage.

“What . . . what happened?” Isabela asked.

“We were attacked,” Ran said. “You were shot with a tranquilizer dart.”

Isabela touched a sore spot on her neck. “Jesus Christ.”

“A young man—we think he was Garde—took Taylor. Teleported her away somewhere using a Loralite stone.”

Isabela’s mouth dropped open. “No. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“We are trying to decide what to do now,” Ran continued. “To begin with, we are getting rid of the van. That’s why I woke you.”

Isabela rubbed her eyes. “Where are we?”

“Stockton, California.”

“Ugh. Why? If we were attacked, why don’t we go back to the Academy?”

Ran reached past Isabela. From under the driver seat, she grabbed a broken weapon. A crossbow-looking rifle. The shock-collar thing. One of the guns the Peacekeepers had used against the Garde in the Wargames event.

“The people who attacked us had these,” Ran said. “They could be working with the Peacekeepers. We don’t know. Nigel and I do not feel safe going back there. And Caleb and Kopano . . . well. They want to go after Taylor.”

Isabela brushed a hand through her hair. “Where are they?”

“Outside,” Ran said. She nudged a plastic shopping bag in Isabela’s direction. “We got you a change of clothes.”

Isabela looked down at the bright blue bag. The logo said Big Box—a huge chain of American stores that sold supercheap versions of everything from underwear to guns. With great trepidation, she peered at the clothes within. A boring T-shirt and a terrible pair of mom jeans.

“These are awful.”

“They were the best we could do.”

Isabela sniffed. The cute and strappy dress she’d worn for their night out was ruined, smudged with grime and stained with blood. It was just one thing after another. She touched her wrist where, luckily, Simon’s translator bracelet remained secure.

“Let me get changed,” she said.

Ran nodded and turned to exit the van. She paused, half glancing over her shoulder.

“You are using your Legacy all the time,” Ran said.

Isabela frowned. “I haven’t figured out how to do it when I’m sleeping. Obviously.”

“Don’t you get tired?”

Isabela rubbed the scratchy fabric of her new T-shirt between her fingers. “Of course,” she said. “My tolerance is getting better and better, though.”

“It seems . . .” Ran paused. “I am sorry. It seems like it would be difficult.”

“Walking around the way I am, the way I really am . . . that’s harder than any amount of shape-shifting,” Isabela said quietly.

Ran nodded once, opened the door and hopped out of the van.

Isabela exhaled slowly. She’d spent almost a year hiding her true self from her classmates, cultivating the image of the girl she was before the accident. Now, all her hard work had been unraveled.

Not to mention, Taylor, who Isabela begrudgingly had to admit was her closest friend, had been kidnapped by some psychopaths. This, too, was unacceptable. Taylor, who had seen her real face already—who had kept her secret and not judged. Taylor, who should be here now, who would know the right stupid positive thing to say to make Isabela feel better.

Dressed in her ugly Big Box clothes, Isabela emerged from the van. They were parked in a dingy alley behind a shopping center. Ran sat on the bumper of the van. Nigel stood a few feet away, a small bandage on his head and a larger one on his calf. It heartened Isabela to see that he’d been forced to abandon his punk rock attire for a pair of cargo shorts and a too-big Mickey Mouse T-shirt, which he had ripped the sleeves off of. Kopano stood at the end of the alley, keeping watch, his face as dour as she’d ever seen it. Isabela wrinkled her nose; the pungent aroma of warm trash emanated from a nearby Dumpster.

“Couldn’t you have found a less disgusting place to hide out?” she asked.

“That’s funny,” Nigel said. He smiled at her in a way that she’d never seen before. Usually, his smiles were mocking or smug, but this one . . . it was as if he were smiling at a three-legged dog.

The pity. Already they were starting in with the pity. Kopano stared at her hard, like he was trying to see through her disguise, checking for seams. She snapped her fingers at him.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Isabela snapped. “What do you think? That if you cross your eyes you will be able to see my real face? You already saw enough.”

Kopano simply looked away. “Sorry.”

Nigel cleared his thr

oat. “Listen, love, you don’t have to hide yourself from us, we’re your fri—”

Isabela rounded on him. “Hide myself?” She gestured at her body. “You think this is for you? That I do this for your benefit? Pah.” Isabela spit on the ground. “This is how I like to look. It’s my choice.”

Nigel held up his hands. “All right, all right.”

“Did it happen during the invasion?” Ran asked.

Isabela threw her shoulders back and sighed. “This is the only time we will talk about this, okay? After this special bonding moment, you will never comment on my appearance again, unless it is to pay me a much-deserved compliment. Understand?”

They all nodded.

“It happened a month before the invasion,” Isabela said. “I was at a warehouse party. Something caught fire. There were too many people. I was stuck and . . .” She shrugged. “When John Smith called us all to action, I was in a hospital bed, my body wrapped in bandages. I did not care about the invasion or what happened to the world. I only hoped that one of these aliens would come heal me. They did not. But I was given the next-best thing.”

“Fate,” Kopano said quietly. “You got exactly the Legacy you needed.”

“Fate? Luck? Who cares?” Isabela tossed her hair. “Is that enough sharing? Do we not have more important things to worry about?”

“Yes,” Kopano said. He looked down at his feet. It was strange to see the cheery Nigerian brooding. “We must find Taylor.”

Isabela raised an eyebrow, turning to look at Ran. “You said she got kidnapped. Teleported?”

“Yes.”

“They were Harvesters,” Kopano said grimly. “Taylor must have told you about them coming to her farm.”

Isabela nodded. “The whore who shot me didn’t look like some religious nut.”

“We think she came with the tosser who teleported away,” Nigel said. “She created a Loralite stone. Her friend took Taylor, left her behind. Harvesters attacked her. Snatched her up while we was making our escape.”

Isabela put her hands on her hips and looked at Ran. “Why didn’t you just kill them all?”

Ran looked back at her, but said nothing. It was Kopano who grunted, shoving away from his spot on the wall. “We should go find Caleb. He’s been gone too long.”

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